QOTD: Buying More Than the Basics?
What type of extra-curricular activity do you enjoy taking on with your car or truck? No, not that type of extra-curricular activity, gutter brain. I’m talking about what we can do with our vehicles other than the mundane commute to work five days a week. Towing. Drag racing. Off-roading. Y’know, more than the basics. The fun stuff.
Having just spent two days wielding a 2017 Ram 2500 Power Wagon to crawl over rocks and navigate off-road trails in the Valley of Fire just outside Vegas (review coming later this week), I started to give this question a bit of thought. There are leagues of people who make their purchasing decisions based not solely on road comfort and passenger space, but instead consider a myriad of complicated considerations and preferences unique to their own situations.
Some folks will buy more truck than they seemingly need in preparation for towing their bass boat to the lake. Many more buy a cramped and compromised muscle car, secure in the knowledge they’ll be visiting a drag strip, often before the ink is dry on the purchase agreement. (Shhh … don’t tell the insurance goblins.)
Me? I fall squarely in the towing category. One of the reasons it took approximately five eons for this author to choose a truck — a process in which my long-suffering spouse was extremely patient — were my list of demands for hauling: stout rear-end gear, oil and transmission coolers, integrated trailer brake, and a backup camera. Eventually, I found a truck that checked three of the four boxes; only the backup camera was AWOL on my purchase.
How about you, dear reader? Have you, either with your current ride or with one in the past, signed the note or handed over the cash for a vehicle because it met some existing or future demand beyond basic transport? I firmly believe (and I think my colleagues and most of you do as well) that our ride needn’t simply be a wheeled appliance. Now, go. Have fun. Experience more than the basics … right after you answer our question of the day, of course.
[Image: © 2016 Murilee Martin]
Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.
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I usually have one requirement after I decide on a car to buy (new at least): the largest/most powerful engine option. Even for a daily driver. Sometimes you just want to go fast.
When we had our Forester XT, one of the big parts of its appeal was that it could handle Forest Service roads without drama. 8.5" of ground clearance and decent-for-a-car approach and departure angles were worth the dynamic sacrifice. Before kids, we used it for that purpose about every other weekend. Unfortunately, there isn't yet a BEV or PHEV that can do the same thing, so we sacrificed that ability when we got the C-Max. But with two small kids it's less useful. Since the C-Max came we've only done one small bit of mud-roading, totaling about ten miles -- and it was my LS460 that did it (without trouble). 0.o